Javascript's turned on. Firefox/Iceweasel on Debian wheezy. Refreshed, now I see two miniscule stick figures on a black shoreline looking out over water(?) under a white sky. Zzzzz...
I realize I'm coming a bit late to the party with this question, but I wonder how Derek would edit the brief further if he had the opportunity, or if he is happy with the arguments and policy suggestions as is.
For me, while I agreed with virtually all of his arguments, I found his arguments for reform rather unpersuasive and some of his policy suggestions downright off-putting. DJ remixing as the lead argument? Ignoring copyright trolling? Even some of his strong arguments are weakly proffered. His proposal to create disincentives for renewing copyright was wildly convoluted and would've been a lightening rod for copyright holders to attack.
Sure. First off, know that the SCOTUS has specifically ruled the Electoral College skew between states is constitutional, but has also ruled that state elections must be one person one vote. This is important because of the mechanics of the Interstate Compact.
The Compact says that member states will allocate their EC vote based on the national popular vote. Non-member states would continue to allocate however they choose (most by winner-take-all statewide popular vote.) So what happens is that member state votes are counted X times (where X = number of member states) while non-member state votes are counted X+1 times. That's an unconstitutional because the state elections for electors (per Bush v Gore) are counted unequally.
Think of a Democratic CA voter in 2000-like scenario (reversed so that the D wins the EC and the R wins the popular vote) having their 55 EC votes flipped to the Republican which also flips the EC result. Their argument will be essentially, "My state should've gone Y but flipped to Z because it unconstitutionally counted non-member states' votes more often."
And that's part of the problem with the Compact, the supporters don't see how badly it could backfire (much like the R's who were knee jerking for all those allocation changes since the 2012 election.) A popular, effective incumbent verses a horrible, elitist challenger eeked out only a 4 point win. When the R's get another plurality, these solidly-D states that have passed the Compact so far will be glad it never got traction.
(Note: also not a lawyer, but I have read extensively on this issue.)
This is the one I like best. For all the talk of it being a red nation or a blue nation, you see that it's really just a mostly purple nation with hotspots of one or the other color.
AR = 2.03E-06 to NY = 1.48E-06 in the Electoral College. In the House of Representatives, AR = 1.36E-06 to NY = 1.38E-06 (i.e. NY voters actually have very, very slightly more power in the House than AR voters.) Mind you, all of the figures are as true for rural NY voters as urban NY voters and for urban AR voters as rural AR voters thanks to SCOTUS one person one vote rulings (that specifically exempted the POTUS election because that election was specifically designed by the Constitution to not be one person one vote.)
It is a rare Presidential election where the winner doesn't get both the electoral and popular vote.
It has happened four times.
And of those four times, you can't really consider 1824 or 1876 because not every state had a popular vote to determine their EC vote. In addition, there was significant voter intimidation, disenfranchisement, and controversy in 1876.
When you start using scientific notation to measure the "worth" of something, you're talking about something pretty worthless. Is it "unfair" that a vote is worth 5.32e-6 vs. another vote being worth 1.47e-6, perhaps, but neither is particularly valuable (also keep in mind that you're using the absolute extremes to make that point, if you look at Montana vs. Pennsylvania, the difference is down to 2.98e-6 vs. 1.57e-6)
At the end of the day however, would you rather have influence over.5% of the election, or 10.2%?
I understand it, I just fundamentally disagree with it because he's right; it's an outdated, inefficient way of governing that leaves room for disgusting levels of abuse via gerrymandering, which is why a majority of people in Pennsylvania voted Democrat, yet only 5 of their 18 representatives are actually Democrat.
And why a third of the people in Maryland voted Republican, yet only 1 of their 8 representatives is actually Republican. That's why I like Iowa's redistricting, a non-partisan computer draws the lines and the legislature has to vote it up or down.
Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity...
Doubling, tripling; sounds to me like it could be explained by an untrained operator not receiving feedback that an operation has been completed, and so clicking again on the button which initiates the operation.
Other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one.
It's a Cartesian select. The real question is why only certain precincts are affected.
Really? How about the artists who produced the 11,000 songs on her hard drive? Someone going in to the music business certainly values it enough to pay for it (although there are legal and ethical ways that she didn't use that would give her to access almost that same library of music for free.)
Look, I get it, her copyright infringement shouldn't be the impetus for increasingly draconian copyright laws (SOPA/PIPA) or result in soul crushing lawsuits (Jammie Thomas-Rasset,) but neither should such wanton infringement be acceptable. Lowery needs to get his head out of his ass when it comes to new business models in music, but he's right to say that it's wrong to rip hundreds of CDs you don't own.
I was expecting to roll my eyes at another Lowery anti-new-music-business screed, but after reading the intern's post, I'm kind of on David's side. 11,000 songs of mostly ripped CD's from her family, friends, and work? She's exactly the type of pirate Lowery always assumes everyone is defending, and it's right that she's being called out for it.
Except that I run the phrase through babelfish, so all I need to remember is "phrase"+"language". I could post my passwords and still be somewhat secure; unless you can figure out which language I used and what capitalization schema I used you're out of luck.
That's a nice idea, but this subpoena was so incredibly overbroad and USSC opinions are usually so circumscribed that the net effect would be the same as to only restrict an executive who wanted to be restricted.
"Miranda tries but has its own funky grey look. Why can't anyone just make a consistent IM multi-client that uses the standard windows look and feel?"
With the right settings, Miranda can have a standard Windows look and feel. It's the first thing I do when I do a new install of it. I have to argee, however, that Miranda's default appearance is funky, actually I'd go as far as to say it's downright terrible and off putting. I've had more than one person that I recommended it to uninstall because it was so ugly before I had a chance to tell them how to make it look better.
There are four or five simple game categories and nothing really new or different. The categories are shooters, puzzles and mazes, adventure games, sports games, and simulations. That's it.
RTS. Fighters. TBS. Platformers.
Why are we giving this dumbass traffic?
First off, thank you, EV is, if not my favorite game of all time, easily in the top three.
Back in the day when I was just starting to write what later became Escape Velocity, I didn't have a PC, but I did see Privateer at the store and thought it sounded really cool.
Necessity is the mother of invention. That reminds me of a text-based C-64 game I wrote based on what I had read of Elite (but was too poor to buy to play it for myself), and another game that got about 3/4 written based on what I had read about Hack and Larn (neither of which was available for the C-64). Hrm... I'm sure I've got that disk around here somewhere, maybe I should finish it up...
"With EA "owning" football and Take Two baseball, that leaves a handful of important sports; FIFA soccer..., basketball, college football, NASCAR, and Formula One. I wouldn't be surprised to see deals made for some of these in the next year."
It's just that FIFA soccer, NASCAR, and Formula One are already exclusive to EA. While the NBA and NCAA both seem to have committed pretty strongly to non-exclusive licensing. Font of wisdom he is not.
...the online component is what will get me to upgrade.
No one's going to be playing NFL2k5 next year, so if I want to play in an online league, I'll need to drop the coin. At $20, I'll do it. At $50, I get my money.
Slashdot Mirror
Javascript's turned on. Firefox/Iceweasel on Debian wheezy. Refreshed, now I see two miniscule stick figures on a black shoreline looking out over water(?) under a white sky. Zzzzz ...
Wait for it...
I realize I'm coming a bit late to the party with this question, but I wonder how Derek would edit the brief further if he had the opportunity, or if he is happy with the arguments and policy suggestions as is.
For me, while I agreed with virtually all of his arguments, I found his arguments for reform rather unpersuasive and some of his policy suggestions downright off-putting. DJ remixing as the lead argument? Ignoring copyright trolling? Even some of his strong arguments are weakly proffered. His proposal to create disincentives for renewing copyright was wildly convoluted and would've been a lightening rod for copyright holders to attack.
Sure. First off, know that the SCOTUS has specifically ruled the Electoral College skew between states is constitutional, but has also ruled that state elections must be one person one vote. This is important because of the mechanics of the Interstate Compact.
The Compact says that member states will allocate their EC vote based on the national popular vote. Non-member states would continue to allocate however they choose (most by winner-take-all statewide popular vote.) So what happens is that member state votes are counted X times (where X = number of member states) while non-member state votes are counted X+1 times. That's an unconstitutional because the state elections for electors (per Bush v Gore) are counted unequally.
Think of a Democratic CA voter in 2000-like scenario (reversed so that the D wins the EC and the R wins the popular vote) having their 55 EC votes flipped to the Republican which also flips the EC result. Their argument will be essentially, "My state should've gone Y but flipped to Z because it unconstitutionally counted non-member states' votes more often."
And that's part of the problem with the Compact, the supporters don't see how badly it could backfire (much like the R's who were knee jerking for all those allocation changes since the 2012 election.) A popular, effective incumbent verses a horrible, elitist challenger eeked out only a 4 point win. When the R's get another plurality, these solidly-D states that have passed the Compact so far will be glad it never got traction.
(Note: also not a lawyer, but I have read extensively on this issue.)
This is the one I like best. For all the talk of it being a red nation or a blue nation, you see that it's really just a mostly purple nation with hotspots of one or the other color.
AR = 2.03E-06 to NY = 1.48E-06 in the Electoral College. In the House of Representatives, AR = 1.36E-06 to NY = 1.38E-06 (i.e. NY voters actually have very, very slightly more power in the House than AR voters.) Mind you, all of the figures are as true for rural NY voters as urban NY voters and for urban AR voters as rural AR voters thanks to SCOTUS one person one vote rulings (that specifically exempted the POTUS election because that election was specifically designed by the Constitution to not be one person one vote.)
It is a rare Presidential election where the winner doesn't get both the electoral and popular vote. It has happened four times.
And of those four times, you can't really consider 1824 or 1876 because not every state had a popular vote to determine their EC vote. In addition, there was significant voter intimidation, disenfranchisement, and controversy in 1876.
It's unconstitutional, but not for that.
Actually there is a backdoor way to have it occur without a constitutional amendment- agreement by the states. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
It's about halfway there.
Not only is it a backdoor way, it'll also open up a can of Constitutional worms that will make Bush v. Gore look like small claims.
Would you rather have a say in 0.5% of the outcome or 10%?
The assumption is that all small states vote the same way...
Indeed. In fact, if you look at the 10 smallest states/districts, it's usually a 5R-5D to 6R-4D split.
When you start using scientific notation to measure the "worth" of something, you're talking about something pretty worthless. Is it "unfair" that a vote is worth 5.32e-6 vs. another vote being worth 1.47e-6, perhaps, but neither is particularly valuable (also keep in mind that you're using the absolute extremes to make that point, if you look at Montana vs. Pennsylvania, the difference is down to 2.98e-6 vs. 1.57e-6) At the end of the day however, would you rather have influence over .5% of the election, or 10.2%?
I understand it, I just fundamentally disagree with it because he's right; it's an outdated, inefficient way of governing that leaves room for disgusting levels of abuse via gerrymandering, which is why a majority of people in Pennsylvania voted Democrat, yet only 5 of their 18 representatives are actually Democrat.
And why a third of the people in Maryland voted Republican, yet only 1 of their 8 representatives is actually Republican. That's why I like Iowa's redistricting, a non-partisan computer draws the lines and the legislature has to vote it up or down.
Would you rather have a say in 0.5% of the vote or 5.4%?
Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity... Doubling, tripling; sounds to me like it could be explained by an untrained operator not receiving feedback that an operation has been completed, and so clicking again on the button which initiates the operation.
Other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one. It's a Cartesian select. The real question is why only certain precincts are affected.
Look, I get it, her copyright infringement shouldn't be the impetus for increasingly draconian copyright laws (SOPA/PIPA) or result in soul crushing lawsuits (Jammie Thomas-Rasset,) but neither should such wanton infringement be acceptable. Lowery needs to get his head out of his ass when it comes to new business models in music, but he's right to say that it's wrong to rip hundreds of CDs you don't own.
I was expecting to roll my eyes at another Lowery anti-new-music-business screed, but after reading the intern's post, I'm kind of on David's side. 11,000 songs of mostly ripped CD's from her family, friends, and work? She's exactly the type of pirate Lowery always assumes everyone is defending, and it's right that she's being called out for it.
Except that I run the phrase through babelfish, so all I need to remember is "phrase"+"language". I could post my passwords and still be somewhat secure; unless you can figure out which language I used and what capitalization schema I used you're out of luck.
Works until they change the algorithm.
That's a nice idea, but this subpoena was so incredibly overbroad and USSC opinions are usually so circumscribed that the net effect would be the same as to only restrict an executive who wanted to be restricted.
This will make an great bisque to go along with that bearded clam.
"Miranda tries but has its own funky grey look. Why can't anyone just make a consistent IM multi-client that uses the standard windows look and feel?"
With the right settings, Miranda can have a standard Windows look and feel. It's the first thing I do when I do a new install of it. I have to argee, however, that Miranda's default appearance is funky, actually I'd go as far as to say it's downright terrible and off putting. I've had more than one person that I recommended it to uninstall because it was so ugly before I had a chance to tell them how to make it look better.
Was he ever actually thought to have been involved with the assassinations, even for a short while? I mean, it's not libel if it's true, right?